How to do fast localization for Android & iOS?

In our daily development life, Client needs multiple language support for their app. So we have to spend a lot of time to translate strings into multiple languages. It not only for android development but it also for iOS development.

So now it’s time to say bye-bye typical job to convert app to multiple language manually. Google already have formula to translate strings into multiple languages using its Google translation kit.

Android have by default Translations Editor. use this tool when you have an app that supports multiple languages. Translations Editor provides a consolidated and editable view of all of your default and translated app text. so that you can view, manage, and localize all of your string resources in one place. see more details about Translations Editor.

let see on this blog how to do fast localization for android and iOS app.

we are familiar with trivial steps of creating or adding translations by creating separate values folder for individual locale. ex. French, Japan, Germany etc. and creating strings.xml file for Android. Instead of adding translated values to each keys using Translations Editor, we prefer using the automated creation of string resource values from Google Sheets.

The below steps briefs this procedure clearly.

  • Open google sheet in browser
  • Create a new spreadsheet
  • Create 4 columns. Key, English Translation, French Translation (for French) and French Translation Values.

the sheet would look like in the below picture

    • French Translation Column will use below formula to create values automatically by reading English Translation column values.

Formula:
=GoogleTranslate(B3, “en”, “fr”)

  • In place of “en” we can use keyword “auto” for auto detecting language.
  • Translated String (Android) column aims at creating values that we can directly copy paste in string.xml belonging to ‘values-fr’ folder.
    Ex: For “Hello” value will be “Bonjour”.
  • This value will be created automatically applying Google Formulas for the cell value.

Formula

=”<string name” & “=” & char(34)& A3&char(34) & “>” & C3 & “</string>”

Now copy all values of “Translated String (Android)” column and paste them inside tag string.xml file created under “values-fr” folder.
Similarly, we can add translations for iOS projects also making use of below formula

=char(34)&B3&Char(34)&char(61)&char(34) &C3 &char(34)

We need to add column “Translated String (iOS)” and copy paste above formula in a 1st cell of that column. To add remaining values in the same column follow same drag method.

Get google sheet for above formula.
How to use this sheet?

  • Step 1: Make a Copy of this sheet: File->Make a Copy
  • Step 2: Keep your key from existing string.xml file in Column 1 (Applicable for Android only)
  • Step 3: Keep your English reference String (Applicable for iOS only)
  • Step 4: Keep your new translation in column 4 and 5, apply formula for column 3 by drag method
  • Step 5: Apply the formula from column 4 for Android and Column 5 for iOS (By Command + Drag)

That’s it… Isn’t it a pretty easy!!!

You can add new columns for different languages using following translator codes for different languages.

Here is translator code for different languages.

 

 

Language

ISO-639-1 Code

Afrikaans

af

Albanian

sq

Amharic

am

Arabic

ar

Armenian

hy

Azeerbaijani

az

Basque

eu

Belarusian

be

Bengali

bn

Bosnian

bs

Bulgarian

bg

Catalan

ca

Cebuano

ceb (ISO-639-2)

Chinese (Simplified)

zh-CN (BCP-47)

Chinese (Traditional)

zh-TW (BCP-47)

Corsican

co

Croatian

hr

Czech

cs

Danish

da

Dutch

nl

English

en

Esperanto

eo

Estonian

et

Finnish

fi

French

fr

Frisian

fy

Galician

gl

Georgian

ka

German

de

Greek

el

Gujarati

gu

Haitian Creole

ht

Hausa

ha

Hawaiian

haw (ISO-639-2)

Hebrew

iw

Hindi

hi

Hmong

hmn (ISO-639-2)

Hungarian

hu

Icelandic

is

Igbo

ig

Indonesian

id

Irish

ga

Italian

it

Japanese

ja

Javanese

jw

Kannada

kn

Kazakh

kk

Khmer

km

Korean

ko

Kurdish

ku

Kyrgyz

ky

Lao

lo

Latin

la

Latvian

lv

Lithuanian

lt

Luxembourgish

lb

Macedonian

mk

Malagasy

mg

Malay

ms

Malayalam

ml

Maltese

mt

Maori

mi

Marathi

mr

Mongolian

mn

Myanmar (Burmese)

my

Nepali

ne

Norwegian

no

Nyanja (Chichewa)

ny

Pashto

ps

Persian

fa

Polish

pl

Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil)

pt

Punjabi

pa

Romanian

ro

Russian

ru

Samoan

sm

Scots Gaelic

gd

Serbian

sr

Sesotho

st

Shona

sn

Sindhi

sd

Sinhala (Sinhalese)

si

Slovak

sk

Slovenian

sl

Somali

so

Spanish

es

Sundanese

su

Swahili

sw

Swedish

sv

Tagalog (Filipino)

tl

Tajik

tg

Tamil

ta

Telugu

te

Thai

th

Turkish

tr

Ukrainian

uk

Urdu

ur

Uzbek

uz

Vietnamese

vi

Welsh

cy

Xhosa

xh

Yiddish

yi

Yoruba

yo

Zulu

zu